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Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

businessinsider.com

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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#341

Post by coryrc »

lazide wrote: post #273
coryrc wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every dollar spent on the elderly who had their whole life to prepare is a dollar not spent on a child growing up in poverty who has not yet had a chance. Families should take care of their own. If nobody is willing to do that for you, you probably aren't deserving.

Well, except it isn’t right? We can and do budget them separately. Might be more fair to say ‘every tomahawk missle fired randomly at a target at the Middle East is an entire middle class families lifetime income down the tubes’.

It's just as fair in my opinion.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#342

Post by sam0x17 »

whakim wrote: post #331
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet would be Ruby. It's much more beginner friendly and is a thoroughly consistent OO language—i.e., everything is an object, including numbers and strings. Ruby's also got a much better web dev story, which is good for junior devs (without ML and/or infrastructure backgrounds) who are looking to enter the market. After learning Ruby, either JS or Java could be a great 2nd language.

I certainly don't think Ruby is indefensible. I think it's possible to get a lot done with Ruby, and I think that's very valuable for new developers who need to learn a lot in a very limited amount of time. But I don't think that addresses the elephant in the room: junior web developers have to deal with the frontend, and that means javascript. So why waste (very limited time) teaching them a second language too? > I…

I drool over the curriculums at bootcamps that use Ruby (like Lambda School and Ironclad). Alas, the one I mentor in does everything in js/react with a little bit of python sprinkled in.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#343

Post by sam0x17 »

pharmakom wrote: post #119
notJim wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. It seems like they should start with python or even java to learn the basics in a relatively straightforward environment, but one that also implements a lot of constructs in a fairly standard way. They also both have well-documented and large standard libraries. I feel like they should spend a bit of time on that, and then switch to JS, which is relevant for so many jobs these days.

It's niche, but I really think F# is the best language to learn first. Not all of F#, but the basics of let, records, tuples, recursion... All that's required is FSI (the interactive interpreter). You can even fetch dependencies from Nuget inside a script, so there's less setup than Node or Python. Elm would probably work too.

VB.NET was an amazing first language for me, tbh

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#344

Post by sam0x17 »

notJim wrote: post #143
pharmakom wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's niche, but I really think F# is the best language to learn first. Not all of F#, but the basics of let, records, tuples, recursion... All that's required is FSI (the interactive interpreter). You can even fetch dependencies from Nuget inside a script, so there's less setup than Node or Python. Elm would probably work too.

Learning these esoteric languages seems like the opposite of what you want to do if your goal is to create employable engineers in as little time as possible.

I think intuition suggests that but in practice it would be extremely effective. Almost every student I've encountered ends up doing it the long way anyway when the short way doesn't work for them.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#345

Post by sam0x17 »

notJim wrote: post #141
woah wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and Java are probably just as bad as Javascript. I started with Javascript (and self taught) and never had many issues. Javascript is very easy to get running and play around. With Java you will spend a huge amount of time on pointless ceremony that can seem important to a beginner but is really pedantic enforcement of programming preferences from the Java designers (everything is a class for example). With Py…

I agree that Java has a lot of silly boilerplate, but I don't see that as a huge hurdle. Most people will use an IDE that populates it for you. Keep in mind this is for a complete beginner. Dependency management with either Java or Python is PITA IMO, but my idea would be to avoid dependencies during this initial phase of learning the basics.

Yeah honestly pure Java is a real joy. Other people's Java, and in particular anything involving dependencies is where Java falls apart and becomes ridiculously overly verbose. Too bad people don't write Java like I did in college I guess lol? I really don't get what motivates people to write 30 observer classes, etc. Good Java can be so clean...

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#346

Post by eru »

njarboe wrote: post #338
eru wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or the timeless play of load it with debt, payout themselves and declare bankruptcy. Well, as long as they sell the bonds only to consenting adults, what's wrong with that?

"consenting adults" By that did you mean "the Fed"?

No, I did not mean the Fed. Why?

The Fed mostly buys government debt, don't they? Have they recently taken to buying private equity debt?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#347

Post by sam0x17 »

ciberado wrote: post #175
sam0x17 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One huge mistake I think a lot (but not all of) the bootcamps are making is taking the easy route of simply using JavaScript to teach both frontend and backend. JavaScript is a TERRIBLE first programming language. I usually have to spend 2-3 sessions per mentee explaining the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript, where some of the OOP concepts actually come from, and how things work in other languages to put into context the…

My experience is quite different: I used to love to teach introductory courses using JS. Using an omnipresent and familiar tool like the browser as the IDE and the super-powerful debug system integrated on it is a big plus for newbies. Also, the language has clear defects, but they irritate much more the experienced folks than the rookies (that are not so surprised when encountering inconsistencies). Oh, and I have a…

It was great in the ES5 days. Times have changed.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#348

Post by sam0x17 »

skrebbel wrote: post #100
sam0x17 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run into enough problems with objectness just learning map / filter / reduce. I've seen so many angry / frustrated students trying to use a for each loop to iterate over an Array only to find that although this works in most languages, in js these just loop over the fucking KEYS of the object (which now opens up the discussion about how `obj[1]` is not a key but `obj['hey']` is a key and the differences therein.

I wonder if there would be a market for a "stricter mode" version of JavaScript that simply does not allow you to use the legacy features that are so quirky. Eg just disallow for...in to be used at all (but allow for...of) No iterating over objects except via eg Object.entries No inheriting objects from other objects (ie no prototypal inheritance) No var No anonymous functions (ie only named function declarations or…

> I wonder if there would be a market for a "stricter mode" version of JavaScript that simply does not allow you to use the legacy features that are so quirky.

It's almost like we could use a better frontend language. Too bad there isn't some magical universal assembly language supported by all major browsers we could use as a launchpad for such a thing ;)

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#349

Post by sam0x17 »

temp8964 wrote: post #80
sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

Is 50% really bad? How much did they pay? Compare to graduation rate of traditional colleges: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 "The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the s…

That said "some college" can get your foot in the door. "Some bootcamp" is not gonna get you anywhere

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#350

Post by AlchemistCamp »

whakim wrote: post #331
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet would be Ruby. It's much more beginner friendly and is a thoroughly consistent OO language—i.e., everything is an object, including numbers and strings. Ruby's also got a much better web dev story, which is good for junior devs (without ML and/or infrastructure backgrounds) who are looking to enter the market. After learning Ruby, either JS or Java could be a great 2nd language.

I certainly don't think Ruby is indefensible. I think it's possible to get a lot done with Ruby, and I think that's very valuable for new developers who need to learn a lot in a very limited amount of time. But I don't think that addresses the elephant in the room: junior web developers have to deal with the frontend, and that means javascript. So why waste (very limited time) teaching them a second language too? > I…

My perspective comes from having found Ruby a lot easier as a (mostly) beginner after having mostly just used Flash than I found JavaScript 2 years later when I decided to move to the front-end. Since that time, JavaScript has become considerably more complex as new features have been added and its ecosystem has grown.

IMO learning very beginner-friendly language like Ruby to a low-intermediate level first actually speeds up the process of getting to an employable level with a more difficult language like JS.

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